How Brown Saw the Baseball Game, also known as How Jones Saw the Baseball Game, is an American short comedy film produced in 1907 and distributed by the Lubin Manufacturing Company. The film follows a baseball fan, named Mr. Brown, who drinks large quantities of alcoholic beverages before a baseball game and becomes so intoxicated that the game appears to him in reverse motion. During production, trick photography was used to achieve this effect.

The film was released in November 1907. It received positive reviews in a 1908 issue of The Moving Picture World, a film journal, that reported the film was successful and "truly funny." As of 2013[update] it is unclear whether a print of the film has survived. The identities of the film's cast and production crew are not known. Film historians have noted similarities between the plot of How Brown Saw the Baseball Game and the Edwin S. Porter-directed comedy film How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game released the previous year.

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Before heading out to a baseball game at a nearby ballpark, sports fan Mr. Brown drinks several highballcocktails. He arrives at the ballpark to watch the game, but has become so inebriated that the game appears to him in reverse, with the players running the bases backwards and the baseball flying back into the pitcher's hand. After the game is over, Mr. Brown is escorted home by one of his friends. When they arrive at Brown's house, they encounter his wife who becomes furious with the friend and proceeds to physically assault him, believing he is responsible for her husband's severe intoxication.[1]

It is a silent film and was shot in black-and-white,[4] and the finished product comprised 350 feet (110 m) of film.[5] For the scenes which took place at the ballpark, the filmmakers used a form of trick photography in order to show the baseball players running backwards.[6] Siegmund Lubin filed a copyright for the film, under the alternate title How Jones Saw the Baseball Game, on October 26, 1907.[5]

How Brown Saw the Baseball Game was released into theaters by Lubin Manufacturing Company on November 16, 1907, and was still being shown as late as August 13, 1908.[5][7] During this time, the film sometimes was presented as part of a double feature with the 1907 film Neighbors Who Borrow, a short comedy film about a man who loans nearly everything he owns to his neighbors until his wife returns home and berates him for doing so.[7][8]

Advertisements for the film touted it as "such fun", and Lubin himself promoted the film as a "screamingly funny farce".[9][10] It received a positive review in the June 1908 issue of The Moving Picture World which described the film as "truly funny" and that it proved to be "a veritable success".[11]

Modern writings have often suggested that How Brown Saw the Baseball Game was produced as Lubin Manufacturing Company's alternative to the Edwin S. Porter-directed comedy How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game,[9] a film released by Edison Studios in 1906[12] about an office employee sneaking out of his workplace to watch a baseball game only to discover his employer in a nearby seat.[6] Lubin Manufacturing Company was known for creating films similar to competing motion pictures made by other studios. Lubin had previously created films resembling Edison Studios' releases Uncle Tom's Cabin and The Great Train Robbery.[3]

Author Jack Spears wrote in his book Hollywood: The Golden Era that How Brown Saw the Baseball Game and How the Office Boy Saw the Ball Game "used practically the same plot";[13] Rob Elderman's article "The Baseball Film: to 1920" in the journal Base Ball likewise notes the similarities of their plotlines.[6] As of December 2013[update], it is unclear whether there is a surviving print of How Brown Saw the Baseball Game; it has likely become a lost film. If rediscovered, the film would be in the public domain.[4]